Today we’d like to introduce you to Carina Miller.
Hi Carina, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
When asked to prepare to share my testimony here today, I immediately experienced feelings of being overwhelmed. I mean, where do I even begin? I suppose I can start at the very beginning and without being too lengthy, I will try my best to highlight the most important points as to convey just how much God has truly saved my life. This is a testimony about a woman who went from death to life. A woman who has overcome some of the worst circumstances and made it out alive to tell the story.
I truly and wholeheartedly believe that most trauma and pain that leads into adulthood begins in the early years of life. Childhood. From my nonrepressed memory, I can mostly remember as a child feeling a sense of extremely low self-esteem. At nine years old, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, and all my life I was homeschooled. Those two circumstances alone brought me to a place where I would be made fun of all the time. Running to the bathroom and not making it most of the time, while spending most of my childhood in the hospital made me feel so low around others. Not going to a regular school and being able to relate to what other kids In my peer group were going through isolated me from them. I was considered weird, strange and a goodie two shoes. I grew up wanting to run away from home, not feeling loved, not feeling beautiful and ready to escape. I just wanted to experience some “real life”. I was sick and tired of an environment filled with anger, fear, loss of temper and violence. At the time I’d do anything to escape and find happiness and love.
So I went and found me some love. I moved out and down the street at 18 years old, just to land myself in a house where the mother of my boyfriend at the time was experiencing a serious drug problem. My boyfriend then mysteriously got me pregnant unbeknownst to me and threw me out on the street after he found himself another girlfriend whom his mother approved of. A girl who wouldn’t be worshiping and praying, while she walked around the house in the middle of the night, claiming to hear rabbits in the walls.
I left that place and move back home where I proceeded to have an abortion. Seeing that the hostile living situation had not changed back at home, I found myself out and about again with a different fellow seeking a loving relationship with somebody. I was forced to leave home and figure life out. Not wanting to be a complete failure in life, I joined a trade school and became an LVN. I remember my family being extremely proud of me and that’s all I wanted. Someone to make me feel loved and worthy of love.
Two weeks after I graduated I was pulled over for a DUO and had to then crawl back with my tail between my legs asking my father for his help with the situation. Career ideas were gone, my motivation was gone, And all I wanted was to just make money as a restaurant manager and not have to move back home. I knew I wasn’t really welcome there. Well making money is exactly what I did. Lots of it. But then I found myself hanging with the wrong crew who introduced me to cocaine while out partying after work. From age 22 to 24, I struggled with cocaine and alcohol abuse, all while trying to maintain employment. That didn’t work. They let me go due to “strange behavior.”
Now unemployed broken and suicidal, I was ready to leave this earth. But then a friend from childhood whom I met in church, Came into my life. I thought, “ Wow this guy is so amazing and famous! What would he want with me?” He kept coming around me and offering friendship which was really in exchange for sexual benefits. I have been clean one month from drugs before I found a need to find something stronger and harder to make me feel numb and lifeless. I wanted to stay alive to allow for this one good friend to stay around. And it seemed that what I had to give he really needed. He had a sexual addiction. And I had a drug addiction. We helped each other out.
A roommate at the time unbeknownst to me was using meth downstairs from the very place I laid my head every night. So I asked to try it. I went from having a place to stay to losing all of my living arrangements and eventually becoming evicted. But my new friend I was there every step of the way. And as I struggle to eat and find a place to sleep, I continued to keep supplying my most precious gift to him. I will dress up and fancy dresses and go hear live music all around town with no place to sleep afterward. I would go in restrooms and refill my system with more of my numbing substance, then randomly falling asleep in my car at random gas stations or resident streets.
Looking back I see I was so lost, so broken, and completely lacking true love. After living in a shelter and relaxing over and over and over again, I finally found my way to the canon house. I transitional house that stems from West Angeles Church of God in Christ, Where I was born and raised my entire life. There I was able to start life over. There I began to reflect on just how loved I had always been from the very start. It was a love of God I was looking for and had finally found. Through all the rape, molestation, hunger and homelessness that I experienced while I’m drugs… God kept me. He sent angels to clothe me, feed me, And be a spiritual guide in my life that eventually lead to pulling me out!
With God, I was always allowed to come home. And God never looked down on me.
I bet God to show me you truly love me and he did just that. He gets all the credit for my four years of sobriety and he will forever have my heart soul and my mind.
Now that I have come out, I can share my testimony on how to overcome depression, low self-esteem, disease and drug addiction. I really want all of you to know that you are loved, you are precious and your life on this planet is absolutely necessary!
God is the only one who can truly restore what has been broken. He has been so faithful and better to me than I have ever been to myself. God saved my life and showed me such a tremendous amount of love, that made up for all the love that I was looking for and didn’t feel. When I was all alone, he was right there. In whatever state of mind I found myself in, He walked right beside me. He brought me through a deep, dark and hellish journey, holding my hand every step of the way. And never ceasing to take his eyes off me. He opened locked doors, Protected me from I evident danger, fed me when I was starving, Provided shelter when I had no place to go, Defended me when I was surely to blame and Showed incredible favor, As I walked out of the darkness and into the sunshine!
Great is Thy faithfulness! Morning by morning New mercies I continue to see. All I have needed thy hand Directly provided. Great is thy faithfulness Lord unto little ole me!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am very proud to have a presence on social media as an influencer and a motivational individual. I have my own juice business that I started in 2022 to help promote my own personal health in my recent diagnosis of multiple sclerosis and to inspire others to take care of themselves as well. My Juice business name is Sunshine’s Juice Bar.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
My dream is to one day open my open up my own transitional home for young women who have gone thru what I have been thru and also become a drug and alcohol counselor for a treatment center.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @sunshinenyoface
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SunshineFace89/
Image Credits
Jonathan Song
